Why did Facebook buy Snaptu for 70m USD?

In the current smartphone hype everybody focuses on iOS, Android and HTML5 when speaking about mobile applications. Many might therefore wonder why Facebook would spend 70m USD on acquiring a company that delivers mobile apps based on Java ME (J2ME). Facebook has a simple reason: 95% of all phones worldwide are still non-smartphones. According to Sun there are currently over 2.1Bn Java ME enabled devices worldwide. Of all phones sold worldwide in 2010, 81% were non-smartphones. Smartphones still make up a very small percentage of all mobile devices in emerging markets, where Facebook now has their greatest growth potential with well over a billion connected feature phones. Other big online companies such as eBay, Amazon and Yahoo have also acknowledged this and currently invest in similar technologies in order to position themselves among consumers before they have a chance to upgrade their phones.

At Golden Gekko we believe that Java ME still has another 3-5 years potential for brands that want to reach mass market penetration and low end devices across the globe. Last year, for example, the Java ME version of the Malibu Bowling Game had over 5 million downloads in total; 1,3 million from the independent app store Getjar.

This doesn’t mean that Java ME is for everyone but it’s definitely not dead. One of the challenges for app developer has been fragmentation across devices. This meant that you had to develop 100s of different versions. Today companies such as Snaptu, Mobile Distillery and Golden Gekko have solutions that make this much easier.

For more information about the potential of Java ME please contact Golden Gekko.

The Beauty of Fragmentation

Having developed mobile apps for over 5 years we have an enormous amount of good and bad experience from different platforms and fragmentation. So can there actually be good things about fragmentation?

Good

• Working within standardisation is a slow and complicated process. To innovate, technology companies must sometimes divert from the standard
• The agreed standard is not always the simplest or smartest way to do something. Therefore platform developers constantly strive to improve the future standards by implementing them as proprietary components before the standard has been established
• Proprietary technology creates de facto standards – Microsoft Windows, iPhone OS and Adobe Flash are great examples of this
• Differentiation is good – we want different screen sizes, keyboard inputs, sizes and colours. Not everyone wants a black or white iPhone

Bad

• Applications have to be tested on all different variations of e.g. the Android or Symbian OS, display resolutions, user input methods (Touchscreen, QWERTY, etc) and hardware configurations
• The cost of optimising and testing the applications is substantially higher for Android, Symbian, Web Runtime and J2ME due to fragmentation
• The development phase is longer due to the time consuming additional device optimisation and testing that is required

At Golden Gekko we constantly work on improving our platforms and tools to get around these challenges and instead leverage the positive differentiation of fragmentation.

But the title of the blog was the beauty of fragmentation and not pros and cons or how to battle fragmentation. The following graph from Tweetdeck illustrates the enormous variety of Android devices now being used to download and use apps from the Android Market. Beauty or Beast? You be the judge.

Mobile app developer headaches continue

One of the main topics with our clients, partners and internally is mobile application fragmentation. Despite all efforts by handset manufacturers and mobile operators to make it go away it is actually getting worse and worse. Java, Symbian, Blackberry Java, Android, iPhone, Brew, Windows Mobile, Palm Pre, Vodafone Widgets (JIL/Opera widgets to be fair), script languages and more.

Or maybe it is for the better as all the new platforms also encourage innovation in new technology and features? Golden Gekko is probably one of the few companies that doesn't mind fragmentation at all as we think the platforms help deliver diversity.

Who knows? Continue reading on
http://mobione.com.au/wordpress/2009/07/mobile-game-developer-headaches-continue/